Enslaved workers used to grow cotton and mill flour. Now prisoners grind beef and crate eggs. Here, a historian explores Americans' troubling habit of consuming the products of slave labor.

The 2016 Maple fire (photographed in July 2017) reburned young forests that had regenerated after the 1988 Yellowstone fires. More frequent high-severity fires are expected in the future as climate warms, which may change patterns of forest recovery.
Monica Turner
August 28, 2018

An American pilot. A German aide on Capitol Hill. In the first and second world wars, the FBI effectively uprooted foreign influence campaigns. Today, the agency faces an uphill battle.

The 1947 and 1956 editions of the ‘Green Book,’ which was published to advise black motorists where they should – and shouldn’t – frequent during their travels.
Image on the left: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. Image on right: Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.
February 25, 2019

In 1987, Anthony Kennedy was nominated to end a titanic Supreme Court fight. Could his putative successor trigger another one?

Once lauded for their vision and promise, Silicon Valley giants have made life so hard for locals that residents regularly protest the companies, including their amenities like charter buses to save workers from the region’s terrible traffic.
AP Photo/Richard Jacobsen
July 11, 2018

What happens to motivated, determined and egotistical men when they are forced to abandon the White House? As John Quincy Adams once said, 'There is nothing more pathetic in life than a former president.'

Actress Nicolle Rochelle, who appeared on several episodes of ‘The Cosby Show.’
AP Photo/Corey Perrine, File
June 14, 2018